The God Particle?

August 23, 2004

An ambitious new science project is being planned that may uncover a sub-atomic fragment that some call the "God particle," which is thought to have been present in the first few billionths of a second after the Big Bang. The experiment would involve building a gigantic underground atom smasher that would collide particles from the opposite ends of a 20-mile tunnel.Countries such as the US, Britain, Japan and Germany are being asked to share the estimated five and a half billion dollar expense in launching the project. "It will hopefully reveal new and exciting physics, addressing the 21st century agenda of compelling questions about dark matter and dark energy, the existence of extra dimensions and the fundamental nature of matter, energy, space and time," Brian Foster of Oxford University said in an article(1) for the Guardian U.K.